Reviews for The Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis

The average rating for The Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-03-16 00:00:00 Jason Norton The Cuban Missile Crisis was one of the most dangerous moments in history. In the thirteen days from October 16 to 28, 1962, as the Soviet Union installed nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba, President Kennedy demanded publicly that Nikita Khrushchev dismantle and withdraw the missiles immediately. JFK also set up a naval "quaran­tine" that blockaded Soviet ships proceeding to the island. Ignoring the existence of U.S. missiles in Turkey, almost under the USSR's nose, Kennedy declared that the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba was "a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country." The crisis occurred because, as Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs, the Soviets were quite certain that the Bay of Pigs invasion was only the beginning and that the States would not leave Cuba alone. To defend his ally, the Soviet Premier had the idea to secretly install nuclear missiles in Cuba, so that the USA would find out only when it's too late. His strategy was twofold: ". . . the installation of our missiles in Cuba would . . . restrain the United States from pre­cipitous military action against Castro's government. . . . [In addition,] our missiles would have equalized what the West likes to call 'the balance of power.' The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they would learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointing at you." There was, however, a big problem. Khrushchev's logic overlooked the frenzied mind of Cold War America. As Trappist monk Thomas Merton insightfully noted in a 1962 letter, "the first and greatest of all com­mandments is that America shall not and must not be beaten in the Cold War, and the second is like unto this, that if a hot war is necessary to prevent defeat in the Cold War, then a hot war must be fought even if civilization is to be destroyed." Thus, the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba placed President Kennedy in what Merton described as "a position so impossible as to be absurd." In a struggle between good and evil involving world­-destructive weapons, the installation of Soviet missiles ninety miles from Florida filled Washington with the temptation to strike first. As the construction of missile sites accelerated, the pressures on President Kennedy for a U.S. air strike on Cuba became over­whelming. However, JFK resisted his advisers' push toward a nuclear war that he told them would obviously be "the final failure." Interestingly, he secretly taped the White House meetings during the crisis, and the tapes reveal how isolated the President was in choosing to blockade Soviet missile shipments rather than bomb a country much smaller and weaker than the States. In the October 19, 1962, meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who regarded their young Commander in Chief with great disdain, for example, Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay challenged the President, "This [blockade and political action] is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich . . . I just don't see any other solution except direct military intervention right now." In a characteristically Cold-War way of thinking, LeMay considered everything short of an all-out nuclear attack on the USSR to be appeasement. Thankfully, Kennedy did not take the bait. LeMay's words were met with silence. The tapes further show Kennedy questioning and resisting the mounting pressure to bomb Cuba coming from both the Joint Chiefs and the Executive Committee (ExComm) of the National Security Council, especially convened to help JFK handle the crisis. One statement by Robert Kennedy that strengthened the President's resolve against a "prophylactic" strike is unheard on the tapes, but mentioned in RFK's memoir of the missile crisis, Thirteen Days: while listening to the proposals for attack, Bobby passed a note to the President - "I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor." One of the most terrible moments of the crisis was Wednesday, October 24, when a report came in that a Soviet submarine was about to be intercepted by U.S. helicopters, unless by some miracle, the two Soviet ships it was accompanying turned back from the U.S. "quarantine" line. The President feared he had lost all control of the situation and that nuclear war was imminent. Yet, the miracle happened - through the enemy, Nikita Khrushchev, who ordered the Soviet ships to stop dead in the water rather than challenge the U.S. quarantine. At that moment he saved John Kennedy and everyone else. What moved Khrushchev to his decision? One reason, unmentioned in his memoirs, might be his secret correspondence with JFK. His first private letter to Kennedy was twenty-six pages long, and dealt passionately with politics, in particular Berlin (where the two lead­ers backed away from war but never reached agreement) and the civil war in Laos (where they agreed to recognize a neutral government). Unlike in Vienna, where he had stunned Kennedy with his harshness of heart toward a nuclear war, in the letter he emphasized the fundamental need for peace and underscored his and JFK's common ground with a biblical analogy, comparing their situation "with Noah's Ark where both the 'clean' and the 'unclean' found sanctuary. But regardless of who lists himself with the 'clean' and who is considered to be 'unclean,' they are all equally interested in one thing and that is that the Ark should successfully continue its cruise." In his response to the Soviet Premier, President Kennedy whole-heartedly agreed with the Noah's-Ark analogy, but after a year of private letters that included enough Cold War debate, Kennedy and Khrushchev had by October 1962 not resolved their most dangerous differences. The missile crisis was proof of that. In the weeks leading up to the crisis, Khrushchev felt "betrayed" by Kennedy's eventual plans for another Cuba invasion, whereas Kennedy thought Khrushchev was "betraying" him by sneaking nuclear missiles into Cuba. Both were again acting out Cold War beliefs that threatened everyone on earth. Nevertheless, thanks to their secret correspondence, each knew the other as a human being he could respect and remembered that they once had agreed both the 'clean' and the 'unclean' had to keep the Ark afloat. That's why Khrushchev stopped his ships dead in the water. However, the crisis was not over. Work on the missile sites was in fact speeding up, and the Pentagon and ExComm advisers increased their pressures on the president for an air strike. On Friday night, October 26, Kennedy received a hopeful letter from Khrushchev in which the Soviet premier agreed to withdraw his missiles. In exchange, Kennedy would pledge not to invade Cuba. However, on Saturday morning, Kennedy received a second, more problematic letter from the Soviet leader, adding to those terms the demand for a U.S. commitment to remove its missiles from Turkey. In exchange, Khrushchev would pledge not to invade Turkey. JFK was perplexed. Khrushchev's second proposal was reasonable in its symmetry. Yet, Kennedy felt he could not suddenly surrender a NATO ally's defenses under a threat, failing to recognize for the moment that he was demanding Khrushchev do the equivalent with his ally Fidel Castro. While the Joint Chiefs continued to demand an air strike, an urgent message arrived heightening those pressures. Early that Saturday morning, a Soviet surface-to-air missile had shot down a U-2 reconnaissance plane over Cuba, killing the Air Force pilot. The Joint Chiefs and ExComm had already recommended immediate retaliation in such a case; they now urged an attack early the next morning to destroy the missile sites. JFK, though, called off the Air Force reprisal for the U-2's downing and continued the search for a peaceful resolution. The Joint Chiefs were dismayed. Robert Kennedy and Theodore Sorensen drafted a letter accepting Khrushchev's first proposal, while ignoring the later demand that the United States withdraw its missiles from Turkey. What became the moving force for Khrushchev's dramatic announce­ment that he was withdrawing the missiles was Robert Kennedy's climactic meeting with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. According to Khrushchev's memoirs, RFK told Dobrynin that the President was in a grave situation, that "[i]f the situation continues much longer, the President is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power." When in a November 9, 1961 letter, the Soviet leader had hinted, regarding Berlin, that belligerent pressures in Moscow made compromise difficult from his own side, Kennedy had not pushed him. Now Khrushchev felt the urgency of the pressure on the President and was returning the favor - he withdrew his missiles. The crisis was over. Neither side revealed that, as part of the agreement, on the parallel issue of U.S. missiles in Turkey, Robert Kennedy had in fact prom­ised Anatoly Dobrynin that they, too, would be withdrawn, though not immediately. The promise was fulfilled. Six months later the United States took its missiles out of Turkey.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-01-12 00:00:00 Steinar Stromsnes In a way, this is two parallel books. One book explains various theories (from political science/international relations) about how to understand and predict government decision making. It touches on the origin, use, misuse, critiques, and benefits of these models - the rational actor model, the organizational behaviorism model, and the political game model. The other book explains the Cuban missile crisis through each of the above models. The book explains how those models explain different parts of the Cuban missile crisis differently (better?). I liked the book but I haven't read much international relations so most of the book was new to me.